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Letter to an Indian nanny in New York

In return for a Green Card, all you have to do is provide evidence against your prominent employer.

Dear Foreign Housekeeper/ Babysitter in New York:

I am writing to give you some good news. I am the president of Do-gooders Foundation in New York City. We are affiliated to the Sanctimonious Eastern Seaboard Bleeding Hearts Foundation. We can help you get Green Cards and stay in the US indefinitely. We can also help you get members of your family over to the US.

Despite the warnings of some of our earlier leaders like President Reagan, we have managed to put in place laws setting minimum wages at an extremely high level. This has of course, resulted in a large number of young people in our country not getting jobs at all. Most of these young people are African Americans and Hispanics. But this is not the time and place to talk about the deleterious effects of a high minimum wage law on our own youth.

What is of relevance to you is that though you may be getting much higher wages than you would have in your home country, though you may in fact be saving handsomely as compared to your earlier state, though you may have voluntarily taken up employment at wage levels that are attractive to you, the fact of the matter is that those attractive levels are lower than our generous statutory minimum wages. You can leverage this situation to your advantage provided you let us guide you.

You must come with us to our ?friendly? law enforcement official. This friendly official has political ambitions. He/ she wants to initiate high-profile cases against prominent persons (for example, IMF head, consular officer) and obtain convenient publicity by handcuffing such persons on airplanes or outside schools, by subjecting them to the same treatment that is meted out to potentially violent, absconding criminals and by then claiming that all are equal before the law. Quite definitely in the area of handcuffing all seem to be equal in New York, the citadel of Left Liberalism.

You may wish to make the point that you have been overworked and ill-treated. Frankly, this is not of interest to us. Our organisation and the friendly law enforcement officer are both completely indifferent to individual suffering. You are important as a symbol in our sanctimonious fight for Human Rights, with both the ?H? and the ?R? being in capitals. You may also make the point that you were actually treated quite well. This too is irrelevant. We are not interested in the Truth. We are only interested in making our ideological point. You may be aware that there are literally millions of illegal aliens in the US who are not being paid minimum wages. You may be wondering as to why law enforcement officials do not go after these cases. The point is that there is no publicity value unless the alleged perpetrator of the Human Right abuse has a high profile. And without publicity value, there is no political gain for the friendly law enforcement officer. You may also be curious to know as to how large US corporations are allowed to employ college graduates as unpaid interns. This is perfectly in order. It is a way for rich and well-connected kids to enter the job market. Sometimes, we get around the issue by calling them ?volunteers?! That is fine. But the entry of foreign workers into the job market at wages acceptable to them is verboten.

You may be concerned that you have filled out various forms and signed them and therefore that you may be held responsible for them. Please do not worry on this score. We will simply make the case wherever it suits us, that some of the forms have been filled out by your evil employer or that you were tricked or forced into signing them. You may be worried that your family in your home country, who have been receiving generous remittances from you (generous by your home country standards), may get into trouble. Again, you need not worry. We will make the case that you as a witness to gross Human Rights abuse are being intimidated using your family as a leverage point. We will therefore arrange for them to be discreetly brought to the US as part of the programme to protect you as a witness.

In return for getting a Green Card for yourself and your family, all you have to do is to be guided by us in the area of depositions and provision of evidence against your prominent employer. You must admit that this is a far easier way to get a Green Card than having to go to university, obtain multiple degrees, work hard, pay taxes, contribute to social security, improve the innovative and entrepreneurial climate of the US and so on. All these in our opinion are passe. Who wants innovation and entrepreneurship? We are opposed to job creation everywhere in the world ? be it Buffalo or Bangalore or Shanghai. We want all people everywhere to be welfare recipients. That situation entirely suits our purpose. Some of our opponents have accused us of promoting a ?Get Green Cards Easily? scheme. They just do not get it. We are not in the least bit ashamed of this description of us. In fact, we treat this as an accolade.

Lastly, it would greatly help if you can provide us ammunition to convert an employment issue into one of human trafficking. We are not interested in preventing really horrifying human trafficking. But we find this vocabulary very useful in getting favourable judgments from the judiciary and of course great publicity.

Thanking you for your support and assuring you of our best services in helping you and your family get Green Cards,

I remain,

Sincerely yours,

S.A.H.R.Liberal (Self-Appointed Human Rights Liberal)

President

Do-Gooders Foundation ? Affiliated to Sanctimonious Eastern Seaboard Bleeding Hearts Foundation

P.S. In case you are from India, please note that for our political advantage, we would be doubly happy to derail Indo-US relations which were promoted by that vile Republican President George W. Bush.

The writer is a Mumbai-based entrepreneur

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First published on: 24-12-2013 at 10:51 IST
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